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THE LOST LAND OF OURS - THE IMAGE OF KOSICE IN THE WORKS OF SANDOR MARAI AND DUSAN SIMKO dos —— CSABA HORVÁTH ABSTRACT This essay focuses on the image of Kosice in the works of two writers of different languages, ages and identities. One of them is Sándor Márai, a Hungarian writer from the 20 century, and the other one is a contemporary Slovak writer, Dusan Simko. Marai was born in Kosice in the epoch of the AustroHungarian Monarchy and left the city when he was 14. Dusan Simko is a Slovak writer living in Basel, Switzerland. He left Czechoslovakia in 1972. In his first book, The Kosice Marathon (Kosicky maratön, 1984) he wrote the collective memories of the city. This essay is going to show how these writers make in their works a Kosice of memories and how they build a special literary identity belonging to the lost city. Keywords: Sandor Mdrai, Dusan Simko, Kassa, Kosice, Kaschau, emigration, cultural crossroads, multiculturalism The subject of this essay is to show the process and the result of the construction of literary images of the city KoSice in the works of two writers of different languages, ages and identities: the 20" Century Hungarian Sándor Márai and the contemporary Slovak Dugan Simko. The paper attempts to read the artistic attitudes of the authors in question and show how they constructed their “cities of memories” based on the real Kassa-Kosice. In their works they create a city which had long vanished before or may not even have ever existed. Marai and Simko have rebuilt an imaginary place in literature. Their version of KoSice-like the real city — is located at the crossing point of cultures. + 439 +
